After paralysis How a riding accident led to a drive to help others
Tara Stewart was paralysed in a riding accident at 43. Here, she explains how it left her with the drive to help others
Ican recall in minute detail the moment I broke my neck. It was a perfect summer’s morning, and I was hacking Victor, my 17-hands-high grey, in the lanes behind my North Yorkshire home.
That morning, I had thought twice before heading out. Victor was suffering from a condition called kissing spine, which was giving him a lot of back pain, and despite months of trying to rehabilitate him, it had left him jumpy and difficult. Something in the pit of my stomach told me it might not be wise to ride him that day. But with horses, you have to feel the fear and do it anyway, otherwise you’d never get on them.
Standing up in the stirrups, I put Vic into a canter, hoping to give him a bit of a stretch. But as he went forward, it tweaked something and he bucked. Waiting to hit the deck, I remember thinking: “Oh, for crying out loud, this is going to hurt…”
I was thrown out of the saddle and over his shoulder, straight onto my head. I heard my neck snap. I knew what I’d done as soon as I hit the ground.
Lying on the floor, with my left arm trapped underneath my body and my riding helmet pressing into my head, unable to move a thing, I struggled to breathe. For five and a half hours I lay there, willing someone to find me, not knowing how much time had passed or how bad my injuries were.
I couldn’t shout for help – not that anyone would have heard me in the middle of the field – because my voice wasn’t working properly. I am a very practical person, not prone to hysterics, but as I lay there I just kept thinking: “You’re paralysed, you’re in a field, you’ve been here for a long time. This isn’t good.”
Later, I would learn that there were three crucial elements which came together to save my life that July day in 2014. The first was that when I hit the ground, I rolled over and came to rest with my head slightly turned to one side. Had I landed face down I would have suffocated, because I couldn’t lift my head. The second was that it was a warm July day. If it had happened in the middle of winter, I probably would have got hypothermia and died.
And the third thing – and I didn’t realise this at the time – was that the horse stayed with me. Victor was only two fields away from home, so he could have easily headed back. But, unbeknown to me, he stayed close, grazing quietly next to me.
Luckily, a great big horse standing with his tack on and no rider to be seen stuck out like a sore thumb and, eventually, someone riding along the footpath saw Victor and came to investigate. I was still conscious, though I was struggling to breathe.
I was aware that being hysterical was not going to help, so very calmly I said: “Don’t move me. I’ve broken my neck, you’re going to need to get the air ambulance.” The relief you feel when you hear the sound of those rotor blades telling you the helicopter is coming is indescribable.
The paramedics flew me to James Cook University Hospital in Middlesbrough. When my husband James and my parents arrived, the neurosurgeon took them aside and told them I’d broken my neck at C6/7, dislocated 13 vertebrae and bent my spinal cord into an S shape. I would be paralysed from the chest down and, it would be touch and go whether I would even survive the surgery I needed to put my neck back together.
They woke me up so that I could sign over power of attorney to James and my dad. I remember them putting screws in my skull so that they could hang weights from my head overnight to try to straighten my neck out. The next day, I had an eight-hour operation. I lost four pints of blood and it was pretty dicey, by all accounts, but I was incredibly lucky to have such a brilliant surgeon. Two weeks in a coma followed, during which I had horrendous hallucinations. I couldn’t see, speak or move, but I knew I was conscious. I used to have horrific nightmares that I’d been buried alive.
I was in hospital for eight months in total, and since then it has been a steep learning curve as I have adapted to my new life. I was just 43 when I had my accident, and getting used to never again doing all the things I enjoyed – running, riding, swimming, cycling, working, walking my dog – that I couldn’t do any more, has been an uphill battle.
And it may sound awful, but I often think it would have been much easier if I had died, because everybody has had to alter their life to fit around me.
James works in London during the week, and since we lost my mum very suddenly to pancreatic cancer last summer, it’s Dad who has been landed with the lion’s share of watching me.
Both of them are incredibly practical and calm about everything. When I have meltdowns – and I do – James always says “Things could be so much worse!”, because when I was in the coma they didn’t know what would happen. They thought I might be brain-damaged, that I might not be able to breathe on my own.
James and I had only been married two and a half years when I had the accident. He’s had to adapt to a life with a wife who can’t do everything. As soon as I started talking, and ordering people about he thought: “Ok, she’s still here, she’s still her”. But I don’t always feel like me.
On the day I left hospital, I went to look at a horse. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to ride any more, but I now co-own an event horse that a friend’s daughter uses.
It’s really difficult to see someone else ride your horse, watching them do something you so badly want to and can’t. Riding was the thing that, when I was working in London during the week as an advertising executive, helped me relax. I just used to love being out in the countryside with that sense of being at one with your horse.
James, being annoyingly sensible, has always said there is no point in dwelling. I have a different opportunity now, and I plan to use it to help others. It’s why I am raising money for Spinal Research and the Yorkshire Air Ambulance, by selling prints and postcards of one of my Dad’s paintings – a horse-racing oil. I had a major breakthrough recently when I got to drive for the first time since the accident. My handcontrolled car has given me back a tiny piece of freedom. To be able to drive on a beautiful summer’s evening is magic. I feel normal again because, to all intents and purposes, I’m just a woman in my car.
It’s at times like that that I think living might have been worth it.
‘I didn’t know, but Victor stayed close and was grazing quietly next to me’